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A ReallyCoolStory--no matter what reading level it's written for--is that type of story that grabs you by the collar and shakes you. A story you never forget. A story that after you've read it you can't wait to tell others to read it too, and you start your recommendation by saying, "I just read this really cool story."

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The stories I read when I was teen--and also during my college years--that I thought were really cool are what inspired me to become a writer. I'd say to myself, "I want to write stories like that!" I then began writing short stories and poems during my junior year in high school.

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But it was not until my mother discovered a particular paperback book in a used bookstore that I fell in love with the idea of writing really cool stories to try and make a living. That book was The Golden Apples of the Sun by Ray Bradbury. I was 19 at the time and I'd never heard of Ray Bradbury.

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I took the book to college with me (to the start of my freshman year at Northeastern University in Boston) and one quiet Sunday when I was homesick I started reading the short stories inside.

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The first story had a surprise ending that blew me away; I never knew, before this, that a story could have such a cool, surprise ending. So many of the stories teachers had forced me to read in high school were BORING: their endings weak, their characters and their plights easily forgotten, and completely lacking in emotional resonance, so I was left with no attachment to the stories, no "emotional memory," as I call it.

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The second Bradbury story also had a really cool ending that left me breathless. And when I'd finished reading the third story in the book I suddenly had a fever and I fell instantly in love. Bradbury was like a great magician, conjuring the most amazing surprises in his stories.

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Soon after, as I read more in college while earning my English degree, I discovered the cool stories of many other great writers: Hemingway, O'Connor, Jackson, Poe, du Maurier, Dickinson.

 

I fell in love with what a really cool story does to the reader, how it changes your life, even if just a little, and makes you forever able to see the world in a different, perhaps better way; stories that help you grow up to be a better person because your imagination is suddenly open to all the wonder and possibilities in life.

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I hope you savor and enjoy some of my stories. Happy reading!

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- JJM

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